Tesla's Earthquake Machine (part 1)

TESLA ROCKS!!!!
Nikola Tesla in front of his Wardenclyffe Laboratory where he tested his "deathray",
and uranus in background.

Nikola Tesla's pretty much known as the inventor that created the alternating current electrical system which is now used worldwide. But some of his lesser known, slightly quack- theoretical inventions also include the electric submarine, and the death ray (dubbed the "PEACE RAY" by Tesla himself) that could be projected from massive power houses 200 miles apart to create "an impenetrable wall for a country in time of war". Anything that came in contact with the WALL would be obliterated. "Planes would fall, armies would be wiped out so that even the smallest country might so insure its security".

Though my favourite so far has to be the earthquake machine, which aptly applies to us in these times of worldwide destruction.

In fact, the "earthquake machine" consists of a simple handheld vibrating assembly, no bigger than an alarmclock, that worked on the principle of matching a frequency so that any object can be shook to pieces. The most obvious example is the wine glass that breaks when an opera singer reaches that certain note.

While walking along Wall St, he found a ten-story high, half-built steelframe building. He fastened the resonator to one of the steel beams and set it in tune until eventually the frequency coincided. The steel structure started to creak and warp to the point that the builders ont he 10th floor freaked out, called for the police and ran down to the ground, thinking there had been an earthquake. Just 10 minutes more would've bought the whole buidling shattering to the ground, and even bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. He even boasted that it could split the earth in half...and no one ever knew if he was joking...or not.

Back at his inventor's studio, he set up a small machine based on the resonator and proceeded to get on with other more urgent inventions, while the surrounding vicinity suffered for the next few weeks from shaking bookshelves, shattering windows, policemen donuts falling off tables, pipes breaking and furniture creeping across the floor.

The earthquake machine ended up being smashed by Tesla himself. No one knows why exactly, but it may have had something to do with its "laxative effect" which had you constantly running to the nearest toilet.

sources:
"Nikola Tesla's Earthquake Machine" by Gregory Bishop
New York Sun, "Tesla Invents Peace Ray", 10 July 1934
Manipulating and Harnessing the Schumann Resonance by Brian David Anderson

Wittgenstein's Loveur - A Cacophony of Sound

1. Wittgenstein's Loveur - 01 Wittgenstein's Loveur.mp3
2. Mr.Kite - 02 Mr.Kite.mp3
3. Intermission - 03 Intermission-mozart.mp3
4. Disco Whore - 04 Disco Whore.mp3

Testosterone Paradise Part II (Month of Photography, Bangkok 2008)

I have no idea how this happened but the videos I've been "remixing" from the tonne of Rambo/Rocky/Kick Ass Slyvester Stallone and Bruce Lee movies I own... has somehow turned into a melancholic love story.










See Also "Testosterone Paradise Part 1" and "Rocky, the Heptology or Sexology"

Divination III (Hamburg-Paris-London)

If you're in London from 21st June 2008, then visit our exhibition Divination III at the Brunswick Centre (Russell Sq/Warren St tube), which is the culminating exhibition in the Divination series. Many of the artists are graduates from the Slade School of Fine Art, Central St. Martin's and the Royal College of Art in London.

Some of the works from across the three exhibitions pictured below.


Hamra Abbas - Battle Scenes (2006)




Left: Adham Faramawy - Nut and Geb (2007) Middle: Adham Faramawy, A3LAA EL MA3ALY, 2007
Right:Millie Brown & Adham Faramawy - Vomit Window (2007)



Marenka Gabeler & Lucy Pawlak - Gabeler and Pawlak in Major City Exclusive (2007)



E.M.C. Collard, Zahnderzeitpasta 1, 2006 Loukia Alavanou, Chop Chop (Video Still), 2007



Ludovica Giosica, MOIRA, 2008 Momo Ando, HappyBirdsDay, 2006 Noa Edwards - Angel of Amundsen (2007)




DIVINATION (Part III)

Group exhibition at Brunswick Gallery, London
21 June - 28 June 2008

Divination is a traveling exhibition, which has so far taken place in Hamburg
and Paris, showing 20 international artists in each part of the series.
Working in a variety of media, the participating artists share an affinity with
a cryptic form of communication, which considers ‘seeing’ in a wider sense.

The series aims to explore the ritualistic and social character implied by the title, in
many ways parallel to the processes of cultural production and consumption.
The selection of work acknowledges notions of non-rational structures of
knowledge and experience: to quote Lewis Carroll "It‘s a poor sort of memory
that only works backward"


Participating artists:

Hamra Abbas
Loukia Alavanou
Momo Ando
Helene Appel
Jessie Brennan
Millie Brown
William Cobbing
E.M.C. Collard
Tintin Cooper
Juniper Daumier
Noa Edwards
Adham Faramawy
Melissa Frost’s
Marenka Gabeler and Lucy Pawlak
Richard Gasper
Ludovica Gioscia
Lia Anna Hennig
Jonathan Murphy
Ursula Llewellyn
Usman Saeed
Michael Stokes
Mimei Thompson
Gaea Todd


Divination website

Divination, by writer Martin Holman

Life Boat #2551 - Thai Contemporary Artists Battling it out at Sea

For the next exhibition in Sydney at the Asia-Australia Arts Centre / Gallery 4A....

...Michael has come up with the peppy theme "Lifeboat", which I think sounds rather like a gay club-night. But actually it's even scarier- the idea is that he's going to throw in 12 random Thai contemporary video artists into one show and see how much it clashes.




Everyone in the show happens to be linked in some sort of way, the Thai art scene is totally incestuous. For example, Jim Brewer's showing one of his music videos for Momokomotion (my ex-flatmate who I play guitar for), Manit and I have been in about 6 shows together in the last 2 years, Michael is in our next exhibition "Face a Faces" which is also co-curated by Manit. Wit works downstairs with his team DuckUnit. Sakarin Krue-on, who made a massive rice field at Documenta last year is practically my uncle, and Som (Sutthirat Supaparinya) showed her work with us in a make-shift art-party-rave last year at our scummy artist house....

I wish we do the lifeboat thing for real!
Let's see how the legendary Thai passive-aggressiveness works out then!

Anyway I could really do with more gay, peppy exhibitions at the moment. Sometimes serious, intellectual, condescending art can get...well rather heavy (see *serious art exhibitions*, Divination III and ArtAids if you're feeling masochistic).